TKE was wrongly accused

Nov. 16, 2005

by MARK LAYMON, Student Body President

The purpose of student government is to serve the student body. However, because our organization is made up of students, just like every other one on campus, we do make mistakes. And student government recently made a mistake involving Tau Kappa Epsilon.

On behalf of student government, I would like to apologize to the fraternity for accusing it of misappropriating Student Life Fund allocations. We thought TKE had spent money on horseshoes for their TKE Toss -- a hurricane relief fundraiser -- on Sept. 22. Congress had amended the allocation bill to exclude money for horseshoes, but TKE had no knowledge of this amendment and our online records didn't reflect the change.

In light of these events, we feel that it is necessary to publicly clear TKE from any wrongdoing. I would like to acknowledge that this group put on a good event that raised money for a great cause. We also apologize to TKE for falsely accusing them in a public forum.

Furthermore, student government recognizes that we did not check all our facts before bringing suit against TKE.

For example, we were not aware that the reason for the discrepancies in TKE's spending stemmed from our posting of incorrect online copies of the TKE allocation.

We were also not aware that TKE did not receive the initial check for $1,500 from the Student Life Fund.

Because of these major oversights, student government is taking steps to fix these problems to ensure that similar situations do not happen again.

In the future, Student Congress will ensure that organizations have a copy of the passed bill allocating them money and that they understand the details of the legislation. We will also continue to develop the process by which we take organizations to Student Court for misusing the Student Life Fund.

I do believe that holding organizations accountable is a positive, but we must hold ourselves to same standard. I ask that TKE and other organizations on campus realize that we are only human and very fallible.

Our motto is "Students Serving Students" and that is our only reason for being here. We want to serve you.

We would also like to thank TKE for its patience and understanding toward student government and its members throughout this painful process.

Student Body President Mark Laymon is a junior economics major from Richardson.